Discovery and inventory control for remote resource integration with cloud services

A system comprising:

• one or more processors;
• and
• one or more non-transitory computer-readable media storing instructions which, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform operations including:
• deploying a remote agent appliance comprising a discovery plugin in an external environment of a user, wherein the remote agent appliance comprises a virtual appliance that is sealed to prevent a remote access of the user and prohibit execution of arbitrary code by the user, so that the user is capable of interacting with the remote agent appliance via a local console for registration, with all other management operations of the remote agent appliance being orchestrated by a cloud infrastructure;
• creating an asset source specifying a location of the external environment from which external assets and associated asset metadata should be discovered, wherein the asset source references credentials stored in a secure data store of the cloud infrastructure, with credential access for discovery operations being orchestrated by the cloud infrastructure;
• creating a discovery policy for discovering the external assets within the asset source;
• generating a discovery job for retrieving the asset metadata for the external assets discovered within the asset source;
• executing, by the discovery plugin, the discovery job to discover the external assets within the asset source based on the discovery policy, wherein the executing the discovery job includes retrieving the asset metadata for the external assets discovered within the asset source and populating an inventory with the asset metadata, and wherein the inventory contains a collection of assets that includes the asset metadata for the external assets;
• and comprises a single global view of assets across multiple external environments, wherein each asset is uniquely identified by a tuple of external identifier and source identifier, and de-duplication logic is employed to ensure that assets discovered from different sources or environments are presented as a single representation to the user;
• and
• providing the collection of assets and the associated asset metadata within the inventory to the user.

A computer-program product tangibly embodied in one or more non-transitory machine-readable media, including instructions that, when executed by one or more data processors, cause the one or more data processors to perform operations including:

• deploying a remote agent appliance comprising a discovery plugin in an external environment of a user, wherein the remote agent appliance comprises a virtual appliance that is sealed to prevent a remote access of the user and prohibit execution of arbitrary code by the user, so that the user is capable of interacting with the remote agent appliance via a local console for registration, with all other management operations of the remote agent appliance being orchestrated by a cloud infrastructure;
• creating an asset source specifying a location of the external environment from which external assets and associated asset metadata should be discovered, wherein the asset source references credentials stored in a secure data store of the cloud infrastructure, with credential access for discovery operations being orchestrated by the cloud infrastructure;
• creating a discovery policy for discovering the external assets within the asset source;
• generating a discovery job for retrieving the asset metadata for the external assets discovered within the asset source;
• executing, by the discovery plugin, the discovery job to discover the external assets within the asset source based on the discovery policy, wherein the executing the discovery job includes retrieving the asset metadata for the external assets discovered within the asset source and populating an inventory with the asset metadata, and wherein the inventory contains a collection of assets that includes the asset metadata for the external assets and comprises a single global view of assets across multiple external environments, wherein each asset is uniquely identified by a tuple of external identifier and source identifier, and de-duplication logic is employed to ensure that assets discovered from different sources or environments are presented as a single representation to the user;
• and
• providing the collection of assets and the associated asset metadata within the inventory to the user.